Not sure how to start this out, but I've recently begun to suspect that menopause in a marriage is the trap that snaps shut, just when it's too late to begin building another retirement account.

I'm not sure what anyone else's experience here has been with a menopausal wife, but basically they lose every bit of their sex drive and the dryness and shrinkage in their vagina due to lack of hormones makes it impossible to have sex. After doing some research it appears to me that this is the standard experience and that after about the age of 50 - and absent hormonal intervention - pretty much all women are done with sex for the rest of their lives. Add to that that from the stats I find on the net only about 10% of menopausal women are on hormone replacement.

It's been like a light bulb going off now and so many things make sense to me - like why female politicians don't have affairs, why prostitiution is not only a thing but that the majority of johns busted for it are middleaged married men, why people divorce at midlife after seemingly good marriages, midlife crisis, why men used to marry women 10 years younger....and on and on.

Anyway has anyone else had this experience?